


Severus Snape and the Hat of Gryffindor

by Chesari



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Fluff, Gen, Sorting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-15 14:23:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5788675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chesari/pseuds/Chesari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A pair of conversations between a far-from-ordinary wizard and a talking, semi-sentient piece of headgear. Many thanks to my friend Wembley for beta-reading.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Severus Snape and the Hat of Gryffindor

"Snape, Severus!" called the tall witch in the emerald green robes. She'd told them her name back in the entrance hall, but he hadn't heard it well. Professor McGoggle, he thought, or something like that. He'd been too distracted by the castle, the ghosts, the other first-year students. It was all too much, so many new things at once.

He swallowed and clenched his hands into fists and made himself march toward the stool. There were hundreds of people staring at him right now. He tried his best not to think about them, and when he sat down he didn't look at them. He looked at his knees instead.

McGoggle set the talking hat - the Sorting Hat - onto his head. The hat was much too big for him. It fell down over his eyes.

"An interesting case," said a small, creaky voice from somewhere above his right ear. "Clever, certainly. Ambitious, absolutely. Two Houses would suit you equally well - now which should I put you in?"

_Gryffindor_ , he thought, as clearly as he could. His mum had told him that the hat would hear.

"Oh no, no, Gryffindor won't do for you," said the hat. "Not that you aren't brave, but it's a different sort of bravery than Godric had. You wouldn't go looking for daring, dangerous deeds to do. You've no wish to play the hero."

_My friend's in Gryffindor,_ he thought, and he wondered if the hat could tell how desperate he was. His best friend. His only friend. _You put her there. You shouldn't have, she's not like them, but you did. So you can put me there too._

"I'm afraid not, my boy. I can offer you Slytherin or Ravenclaw, and since each of those Houses is an excellent match for your talents and traits, you may make the choice between them. Which will it be?"

He scowled beneath the brim of the hat and thought _GRYFFINDOR_ at the stupid, stubborn thing, willing it to do what he wanted.

"What was that you said on the train, hmm? 'If you'd rather be brawny than brainy?'" The hat's voice was smug. "I won't do you the disservice of sorting you into a House that you despise. You'd never fit in there. You'd never want to."

The hat was right - he did hate Gryffindor. His mum had told him all about that House, and he wanted nothing to do with it. Or had wanted nothing to do with it, until ten minutes ago when "Evans, Lily" put on the hat and it immediately shouted the name of the worst House possible.

_I'll fit in with her,_ he thought, determined. _It doesn't matter what House I'm in as long as it's with her. The rest of them can sod off._

"Language!" the hat said briskly. "Well, if you won't be convinced… Let me ask you a question, young Master Snape. If you had to slay a dragon, how would you go about it?"

That was a strange question, but coming up with answers was easy enough. He could think of half a dozen ways right off the top of his head. Poison it - you'd put the poison on meat so the dragon would eat it. Put the dragon to sleep somehow, or wait for it to fall asleep, then sneak up and stab in a soft spot. The belly would work, or the heart, or better yet, through one of its eyes and into its brain. Or get another dragon, one that you'd tamed, to fight and kill the bad one. Or make friends with a giant and get the giant to kill the dragon, or use a spell or a potion to make the giant do it. Levitate a big boulder and drop it on the dragon's head when it wasn't looking. Use the Killing Curse - that spell was only illegal to use on people, not on animals, and it would kill anything stone dead.

"You would use your wits," the hat said. "You'd use cunning. You would try to avoid any risk to yourself. You would not, for example, equip yourself with sword and shield and armour and then charge the beast head-on."

_Of course not_ , he thought _. Only an idiot would do that_.    

Then he remembered, a little too late, the story of Godric Gryffindor and the Serpent of Caernarfon. The "serpent" had probably been a Welsh Green, or at least that was what _Hogwarts, A History_ said in its chapter about the Founders. And brave Sir Godric had, of course, bravely run right at the thing and chopped its head off with his big shiny sword.

So he'd just called the Founder of the House that he wanted to be sorted into an idiot. And he'd said that, or thought it, to that Founder's own magical hat, which was about to decide what House he should be sent to.

Bloody effing brilliant.

The hat chuckled. "You see what I mean? Godric might have got on well with you, but I'm afraid you wouldn't have with him. Nor would you with his House. We've been here long enough now. It's time for you to choose. Will it be Ravenclaw or Slytherin?"

He gritted his teeth. He was not going to let this stupid hat beat him. It wouldn't obey his orders, but maybe… If he could fool it, just for a minute…

He imagined himself with a sword and shield, fighting a huge vicious dragon, dodging fireballs and shouting a war cry as he attacked. He thought deliberately and loudly, _I'm bold and I'm daring and I want to be a hero._ He tried to feel brave and not all that bright. He tried to be a Gryffindor, pretended as hard as he could.

"Well, that does decide it," the hat said, and it sounded a little sad.

He felt it shift a little on his head - the rip near its brim was opening, he thought with excitement. It was about to say where it had sorted him. He'd done it, he'd got what he wanted, he'd be in the same House as -

"SLYTHERIN!"  

He sat frozen, disbelieving, gripping the sides of the stool tightly. People were clapping - not that many, but he could hear them cheering and whistling from one corner of the Great Hall. The hat was lifted from his head, and there was McGoggle looming over him, with a prim, fake smile on her face. "Join your House, Mister Snape," she said.

There was nothing he could do about it, not without making a scene. And he couldn't afford that, not on his first day at Hogwarts. He'd be a laughingstock for the next seven years.

He huffed out a sigh, and climbed down from the stool, and started the long walk toward the Slytherin table.

One student who wasn't a Slytherin was cheering for him. Lily stood next to her chair at the Gryffindor table, clapping like mad and completely ignoring the stares of the students around her. Ignoring those prats who they'd met on the train, even though the one with glasses was tugging on her sleeve, trying to get her to sit down again.

She was smiling right at him. Like he was the only person there, the only one worth paying attention to.

He grinned back at her, feeling lighter. Gave her a little wave as he passed by. It would be all right. She'd still be his friend. Houses mattered, but maybe they weren't all that important. And his mum would be proud when she found out - she'd been a Slytherin too.

The hat had beaten him, and he still hated it for that, but maybe it had been right to put him where it thought he belonged instead of where he'd asked to go. Things might work out for the best. Things hardly ever did work out for him, but he was at Hogwarts now. Hogwarts was a lucky place. His mum had told him so.

At the Slytherin table, a tall blond teenager with a prefect's badge introduced himself as Lucius and welcomed him to the House that bore the sign of the serpent, the House of Salazar.

****************************

 

He saw the hat again many times over the years, but he never bothered to speak to it. Not until the day he became its master.

On the evening of that day, he entered the office he'd stolen from the man he'd killed. He cast his gaze around the room, searching out the things he'd have to change to fill the role he'd never asked for, that he didn’t and couldn't and never would deserve.

The silver instruments on their small tables would have to go. The golden perch where a phoenix had once roosted would be removed. The chintz armchairs would be replaced with something straight-backed and severe, with dark leather padding or none at all. The curtains, red and gold, would soon be changed to green and silver. The bowl of sweets on the desk would simply be binned.

Behind the desk sat the Sorting Hat on its shelf. It didn't speak, but it moved, curling its brim upward just a little. The movement proved to him that it was awake - but then, it might not ever sleep. He wondered whether it could see him. It had no eyes, but it had no ears either, and he knew for a fact that it could hear perfectly well.

He paced to the other side of the office, around the desk, and picked up the hat by its point. He held it up before him with one hand, and he held his wand with the other.

"I ought to light you on fire," he said softly. "Or shred you to bits and let the crows make nests from you. If you'd done what I asked all those years ago, she might have lived. And I'd be -"

He stopped. He couldn't know what he might have become in a different House, with different friends and guardians. With different enemies.

"It would have gone against my very nature," the hat said, in its creaking, leathery voice.

"As if I care," he spit. "You made a choice, and I paid for it. You could have chosen differently."

"I am only a hat," the hat said. "Free will is not among the powers granted to me by my maker. It was the choice you made that sorted you. I merely called out the result."

He stared at the blasted, wretched thing. Crushed its soft peak in his fist. He wanted to disbelieve it. But he couldn't, not quite. He'd tried to trick the Sorting Hat - and that, beyond all doubt, was a Slytherin thing to do.

"So that's it," he said, his voice rasping. "One choice, at age eleven, and we're damned for it. The rest of our lives we're damned."

The rest of their very short lives, sometimes. If she'd been anything other than a Gryffindor, she might never have paid any mind to James Potter. Might never have had a son with him. Might never have joined him in death.

The portrait of the man he'd murdered opened its mouth to speak - but the hat spoke first. "Oh, it's never only one choice," it said. "Fate isn't so simple as that. I'm sure you've made many choices, both when you were a student and afterward, that set your course."  

That was all too true. He'd damned himself.

His anger at the hat subsided. He sighed, and set the tattered thing back onto its shelf. He pulled back the tall wooden chair that sat behind the dead man's desk and sank into it, folding his arms across his chest. He'd keep the chair as it was, he thought, and the desk as well. This was not his office. He wouldn't forget that fact.

"Tell me," he said to the hat, "if you could sort me now, what House would I be in?"

"An intriguing question!" the hat replied. "I recall telling you that you would make a fine Ravenclaw, and I'd wager that is still the truth. Or there is the House that you were sorted into, that you've since been Head of for so many years."

He was, of course, an excellent example of the species Slytherin. He'd never have survived so many encounters with the Dark Lord without cunning and ruthlessness and a fork-tongued serpent's talent for lies.

"Still not Gryffindor?" he asked, although he knew full well what the answer would be.

The hat chuckled. "I'm never that far wrong."

"Someone believed you were, in my case." He looked over his shoulder at the portrait of the dead man. "A sentimental old fool once told me that he thought we sort too soon. I know what he meant by it. He was a Gryffindor himself, and as arrogant as any of them. I'm sure he thought it the greatest of compliments to insinuate that I might belong in his favored House."

The portrait of the old fool smiled gently, its painted eyes glistening with painted tears. He looked away before he could start welling up himself. Not here. In private, in his quarters, away from portraits and talking hats and all the rest of the world, he might allow himself a moment of weakness. But not here, not now.

"Well," the hat said, "I suppose I can't be sure. Unless you'd let me have another look inside your head."

He considered it for a long moment. It couldn't do any harm. He might not like what the hat had to say, but whatever it said would stay in this room, known only to the hat and the portraits and himself.

He turned in his chair and reached up and plucked the hat from its shelf, and set it on his head. It didn't fall over his eyes. It fit now. Fit perfectly, in fact. It seemed that his head was precisely the same size as Godric Gryffindor's had been.

But only literally speaking. Figuratively, of course, Gryffindor's head had been rather larger than that dragon he'd slain in Wales.

He could feel the hat searching his mind, carefully carding through memories. He hadn't felt a thing when he was a child, but he'd learned Occlumency since then. The practice made one more aware.

He waited for the hat to speak. It didn't.

"Well?" he said.

"I need time," the hat whispered in his ear. "I've grown accustomed to childish minds, and yours is anything but. Patience, please."

He waited longer, drumming his fingers on top of the desk. A thought struck him that made him smile, though the irony of it was cruel - he was, in all likelihood, capable of fooling the hat now. He'd misdirected the Dark Lord's attempts at Legilimency often enough, and even the old man's a time or two. Whatever enchantment the hat employed to read minds, it couldn't be as difficult to foil as -

"Don't count on it," the hat said wryly.  

He smirked, and thought to the hat, _I'm not trying now._ In fact it took some effort to stop himself from occluding. The force of that habit had grown much stronger over the past several years.

He waited a few moments more, and finally the hat said, "Well. I must admit, I am astonished. I hadn't expected this."

So the old man had been right. It was Gryffindor after all. He didn't want that House now, not after the vile things he'd done - been forced to do - for the sake of a heroic cause. He wondered what the tipping point had been, what change in him the hat had seen. Which choice of his it was that had re-sorted him.

"You're getting ahead of me," the hat said softly. "First, the formalities." He felt the rip near its brim open wide, and it announced to the empty room, "The Headmaster is of all Houses and none!"

He raised an eyebrow. That might be true in theory, but he'd never heard of a Head of Hogwarts who didn't favor the House they'd spent time in as a child. Those seven years were not easily forgotten.

"A fallibility of your kind," the hat said, whispering again. "Now for the verdict, which will remain between you and me."

_Get on with it_ , he thought. He'd waited long enough.

"You know which House it is that never shies away from what is hard. You know which House it is that perseveres until the task is through, however arduous that task may be."

That… That was preposterous. Utterly absurd _. You've gone mad_ , he thought _. You've been sat alone on that shelf for too long. You're round the bend._

"You know which House," the hat went on, as if it hadn't heard him, "is loyal forever to those it loves, loyal until its last breath. You know which House will sacrifice of itself for the good of others, and draw no attention to what it has done, and ask for no payment in return."

_They're known for their kindness, patience, and tolerance,_ he thought. _Please do feel free to explain how any of those traits can be ascribed to me._

"I never claimed it was a perfect match," the hat said. "But it is the best of the four. Dear Helga never required perfection. She'd have welcomed you and done her best to improve your disposition, and she would have succeeded. She always did."  

It couldn't be true. He didn't want it to be. _They're ordinary by definition_ , he thought. _Not ambitious or cunning, not reckless or brave, no more intelligent than the average child. I am not ordinary, and I never have been_.    

"Quite true," the hat said. "But… I am sorry. I did make a mistake with your Sorting. This was as true when you were eleven as it is today, and if I'd given it more weight, perhaps your choice would have been different. You are not ordinary, but you dearly wish to be."

He sat frozen, his hands gripping the edge of the desk. The very idea was disconcerting - more than it should have been.

_You're wrong,_ he thought. _When I was eleven_ , _I wanted to be the world's most powerful wizard._

"When you were eleven, you did," said the hat. "And what else did you want?"

Lily Evans, of course. He'd had vague, childish designs on marrying her one day. He'd had a picture in his head of a tidy little brick house - he realized now that her family's home had inspired that image. A few laughing children, their children, would be running around the garden, perhaps with a dog at their heels. He and Lily would be in the kitchen baking chocolate biscuits, and he knew where he had gotten that idea too. She'd taught him how to make them when they were ten, with her mum keeping an eye on the proceedings and Petunia sulking in the sitting room. She'd gotten flour on her nose and biscuit dough in her hair, and every time he'd looked at her he couldn't help but smile.

"You see what I mean. A great and powerful wizard doesn't live in a tidy little house with his childhood sweetheart and the happy pack of children they're bringing up together. Great wizards are altogether too busy with the business of being great. That sort of dream belongs to mundane wizards, and even Muggles. Ordinary people."  

He hadn't seen the conflict between his desires when he was a child. Become the most powerful wizard, marry the most beautiful girl - the first would naturally lead to the second, or so he'd thought.

How wrong he'd been.

"You've no great ambition now," the hat said. "No thirst for power or recognition. When your task is done and this war is over, what will you do?"

_Lie mouldering in a grave_ , he thought sourly _. Or rot away in Azkaban, if somehow I live long enough to stand trial_. If his remaining master didn't discover his treachery and murder him for it, the Order would have his head for what they thought was a betrayal, what had in truth been an act of loyalty. Those were the happy possibilities, the ones that might occur if Potter managed to fulfill his prophesied destiny. If not… He didn't like to contemplate what might happen if Potter did not succeed.

"Perhaps your predictions are correct, but perhaps not," said the hat. "If I may offer a word of advice… I am only a hat, but I've gleaned lessons from the thoughts of many a witch and wizard over the years, and overheard the counsel of many wise Headmasters and Headmistresses. Hope is only gone when you let it go. Plan for the worst, certainly. It's necessary in times like these. But hope for the best as well, and keep some dream alive for yourself."

The hat's advice was as cruel as what the Mirror of Erised had shown him, when he'd stumbled across it his fourth year as a teacher _. My dreams died with her_ , he thought. His eyes were stinging again, and his throat was tight. Not here - it wouldn't do.

"That isn't what Miss Evans would have wanted," the hat said gently. "I know. I saw."

That was too much. _Shut up,_ he thought, and if he'd voiced the words they would have been vicious. But the hat would know already that it wasn't anger that led him to lash out. It was his own fault for setting the damned thing on his head, for letting it in.

He rested his elbows on the desk and pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes. Breathed raggedly and deeply until he'd calmed, until he had some semblance of control again.

"I'm sorry," the hat said, and its small voice was tinged with sympathy. "Godric bade me tell the truth, and so I must. Some truths are difficult to hear."

_Say it,_ he thought, wiping the moisture from his eyes. He wanted the old man - the old man's portrait, rather - to know.

The hat said, "I beg your pardon?"

_You know what I meant, you daft bit of mouldy old leather,_ he thought without venom. _Announce it. Your verdict._

"If you're certain," the hat whispered. "But it won't -"

"Bloody well say it," he said aloud.

"Very well." The hat opened wide its split seam of a mouth and said - not in a shout, not so loud as it would have spoken in the Great Hall, but loud enough that its voice filled the room - "HUFFLEPUFF."

A murmur grew behind him, the portraits whispering amongst themselves. Some Headmistress from long ago said, "We're proud to have you, son," and he knew if he looked round he'd see that she wore black and yellow robes.

_Thank you,_ he thought to the hat.

"Glad to be of service," the hat said. "I'm afraid it won't change what's past, but I do hope the knowledge will bring you some comfort. If ever I can be of aid to you, Headmaster, please call on me."

Nothing could change what was past, and the Sorting Hat was no exception. Its role had always been to direct the futures of its young charges - and everyone was young compared to it. The hat was right. As guilty as he was, whatever fate he might have earned, Lily would never have wanted him to give up hope.

He left the hat in place on his head. He leaned back in the chair that belonged to the dead man and always would, and he let his mind wander to dreams of a life after the war.

He wouldn't continue teaching, if he had the choice. For all the times he'd wished these past few years that he were nothing more than a schoolteacher, he had never enjoyed the job. Perhaps he'd open an apothecary, if he could scrape together the funds. Or he might brew potions for St. Mungo's, if they'd have him. Or he might write. The wizarding world held an abundance of awful, insipid textbooks on Potions and Defence that contained nearly as many misstatements as they did actual facts. He had the knowledge necessary to author something better.  

He would never again serve as spy or traitor or assassin, not for any master. He'd have fame - the wrong sort - but he intended to ignore it, or to drive it away with sharp words and threatened hexes if it came to that. He'd live an ordinary life, as best as he was able after all these years mixed up in the machinations of greater powers. He could picture that. He could see himself content.

"Helga would be proud," the hat whispered, sounding a little proud itself.    

He smiled beneath its brim.


End file.
